The home-darkroom companion for photographers who mix their own chemistry, time their own stages, and want it all written down — to the second.
iPhone · iPad · Mac · iOS 26 · v1.2 beta
Version 1.2 adds the one tool every film shooter reaches for — a light meter — and rebuilds the develop flow around the way you actually work.
Point the phone at your scene, take a reading, and Film Lab hands you an aperture and shutter — constrained to the gear you actually own. Reflected metering off the camera sensor, anchored to Sunny-16, with reciprocity correction per film stock.
The flow now starts from the rolls you’re holding — not the machine. It suggests the recipe from the film stock, defaults the machine to what you used last, lets you mix chemistry inline, and adjusts the dev time live for temperature.
A meter works one way: you take a reading and it holds. Film Lab’s does too — tap MEASURE and the scene EV freezes, so the dials stop chasing the viewfinder and you can dial in your shot in peace.
Freeze a reading; the aperture/shutter/ISO drums solve from it. A live badge flags when the light has drifted.
Save bodies and lenses with their real ranges. No suggestion you can’t actually set on the camera.
Match a grey card in sun (Sunny-16) or your handheld meter. The offset is saved and synced.
Tap-friendly, dark by default, and loud enough to hear across the room. Here’s what lives inside.
DASHBOARD · next roll, chemistry health, what’s drying
CHEMISTRY · kits, batches, capacity & shelf life
RECIPES · steps, dilution, Q10 compensation
ROLLS · REF-numbered, searchable, edge-coded
LAB · machines, gear, photographers, settings
Open a kit and the part-bottles appear with the right volumes. Mix a batch and the concentrate deducts automatically — per bath for multi-part developers. Capacity in rolls, shelf life per batch.
Wall-clock countdown per stage, accurate across backgrounding. A darkroom-loud alarm rings until you acknowledge — then auto-advances to the next step.
Sequential REF numbers, film stock, ISO with push notation, camera, lens, photographer, location. Search across all of it. Print a sleeve label as a PDF.
Account-less and synced through your own iCloud. Log a roll on the phone at the changing bag, review the run later on the Mac — same data, no sign-in. The light meter stays on iPhone; it’s the one with a camera pointed at your scene.
The app launches empty — it’s your lab, not a demo. Walk it once, end to end, and tell me where it’s still rough.
Open the invite on your iPhone, install TestFlight from the App Store if you need it, then install Film Lab. First launch asks for Camera — that’s the light meter only; no photos are taken or stored.
Add the machine you develop on — a Jobo CPE-2, an ATL-1000, or just Manual for a Paterson tank by hand. Manual is the most flexible default.
In Lab → Cameras & Lenses, save a body (slowest/fastest shutter) and a lens (widest/smallest aperture). The meter uses these; your rolls can be tagged with them.
Open a kit or add a concentrate in the Chemistry tab — the catalog knows 510-Pyro, Fuji Hunt, Bellini, Cinestill, Ilford, Kodak. Mix a batch; the concentrate deducts itself.
Add a roll in the Rolls tab, then hit Develop now on the Dashboard. Pick the roll, take the suggested recipe, confirm the setup, run the timer.
The single most important step before you trust a reading on film you can’t chimp:
Open the meter → Calibrate → point at a grey card or your palm in direct sun → tap the 15 hint. Or read the same scene with your handheld meter and type its EV. Fine-trim ±0.1 by eye. If you own a real meter, tell me how far off the phone was — that number is exactly the feedback I need.
Ranked by how useful it is to me:
Be blunt. “This is annoying” beats “nice app.” What I care about most: the meter’s accuracy against a real meter, and whether developing through the app beats your current method.